The recently-revealed God of War: Ascension proves that prequels will continue to be an attractive way for developers to extend the life of a series without having to worry about the consequences and story concerns that come with making a sequel. Still, this announcement made us wonder which release is the greatest prequel in gaming history.

Amazon has released its top-selling digital and physical game titles from 2011. The online retailer has quickly become the quintessential center of great gaming deals, release-day shipping, and exclusive pre-order bonuses (including up to $20 back, in some cases).

The summer has been something of a nightmare for the sales of video games in U.S. retail stores. In August, the trend continued as overall retail game sales fell 23 percent from a year ago, according to market researcher NPD Group.

Game retailer GameStop is handing out $50 gift cards as an apology to gamers who bought PC copies of Deus Ex: Human Revolution after the retailer pulled coupons from the boxes for free versions of the game from cloud gaming service OnLive.

GameStop has removed all PC copies of the Deus Ex Human Revolution game from its stores after the company was caught opening new copies and removing a coupon from cloud gaming service OnLive, according to an Ars Technica report.

With the video game industry’s largest trade show over, it’s time to wrap up some of the highlights. We’ll start with the biggest surprises that VentureBeat’s Dean Takahashi and I saw at the Electronic Entertainment Expo.